Journal Notes

Many popular dime novels of the Old West were written about soiled doves. Author Metta Victor was one of the most famous dime novelist of her day. Readers couldn’t wait to find out what happened to Gold Rush harlots like Eleanora Dumont and Stagedoor Angie. Metta kept thousands of pioneers entertained with her work. At the end of a long and difficult day traveling from Independence, Missouri to points West, invading a wild land and homesteading an uncertain territory, women of all ages escaped their hard pioneer life reading Dime Novels. The mustard colored, paperback books provided the tough female stock of the 1860s with romantic, spellbinding tales of courageous women who braved the elements to find true love. Author Metta Victoria Fuller Victor was one of the most successful Dime Novel writers in the 1860s. Over her forty year career she penned more than 100 stories for the publishing house Beadle & Adams. She entertained hundreds of thousands of fans. Among her most loyal readers included political activists, inventors and the 16th President of the United States. She was born on March 2, 1831 near the town of Erie, Pennsylvania. Her parents Adonijah and Lucy Fuller, moved Metta and their four other children to Ohio in 1839. It was there that eight year-old Metta began writing. While attending a female seminary she crafted her first story entitled The Silver Lute. The well written story appeared in the Wooster Gazette in 1844. Metta was 13 years-old. Two years later a Boston printing company published her romantic novel, The Last Days of Tul; A Romance of the Lost City of Yucatan. The successful book centered around a pair of missionaries who fall in love while working in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The charm and maturity in which Metta wrote captured the attention of many well respected editors who gave her the chance to write additional material. N.P. Willis and George Morris, editors of the New York Evening Mirror and the New York Home Journal, published her next two stories and a serial entitled The Tempter. The serial appeared in the New York Home Journal and was circulated throughout the United States and Great Britain. British readers thought the story was a continuation of a popular book written by Reverend George Croly entitled Salathiel. The books main character, Salathiel, led the mob which promoted the death of Jesus, in return for which he was condemned to the misery of the undead state. Metta’s The Tempter was a best seller in England and was hailed as “a fitting conclusion to the life of an evil betrayer.” In addition to being prolific, Metta was versatile. After tackling romance and Biblically themed stories, she ventured into poetry. In 1850, Metta and her sister, Frances coauthored a book called Poems of Sentiment and Imagination. The work was inspired by Metta’s feelings for the man she had just married, a Doctor Morse from Ypsilanti, Michigan. From 1851 to 1856, Metta wrote four more books and contributed to the Saturday Evening Post and Saturday Evening Bulletin. Her work always contained characters wrestling with a moral dilemma and she was criticized for what some readers called “heavy handed sermonizing.” In time she learned to present her ideals in a less forceful manner and was then praised as a “writer with significant influence.” Her most important book during this five year period was a temperance novel entitled The Senator’s Son. The work was extremely popular and was reprinted ten times. Personal information on Metta is slim. What exactly happened to her first husband, whether he died or they divorced, is not known. But by the summer of 1856, Dr. Morse was no longer a part of her life. In July of that year she married a fellow writer named Orville J. Victor. Orville was the editor of the Sandusky, Ohio Daily Register and the Cosmopolitan Art Journal. In 1858, the pair moved to New York to further their writing careers. Both contributed to various periodicals including the New York Weekly. The editors of the paper were so taken with the Metta’s style they offered her a five year contract worth $25 thousand dollars. Metta managed to fulfill her obligation to the paper while raising a family of nine children and maintaining a home and marriage. Metta’s association with the publishing house of Beadle & Adams began in 1859. Already familiar with her background, editors Irwin and Erastus Beadle made her the editor of a weekly magazine entitled The Home. Metta contribute numerous articles for the periodical and proved her range by providing the publication with a series of books containing recipes and cooking tips. She continued to add to her repertoire, but chose to use a number of pseudonyms on each of the books she completed. Among the nom de plumes was Louis Le Grande, M.D. and Mrs. Mark Peabody. On August 1, 1860, Beadle & Adams released Metta Victor’s first romance novel. Alice Wilde: The Raftsman’s Daughter, the heart wrenching exploits of a rugged woman starting a new life out west, was read by thousands. Fans of the genre and Metta’s writing style eagerly anticipated her next book. The Backwood’s Bride was quickly rushed to the printers and released three months after The Raftsman’s Daughter was made available. Metta’s follow up to the Backwood’s Bride entitled Myrtle, the Child of the Prairie, came out in December that same year. Young women responded favorably to all the romantic novels offered by Beadle & Adams, but had a particular fondness for Metta Victor’s work. She was cleaver and skillful and frequently sprinkled her stories with a dash of humor. Whether her books listed her given name or one of the many pseudonyms she used specifically for her romantic novels, her work was easily identified. In 1861, Metta’s husband joined the editorial staff at Beadle & Adams. Orville encouraged his wife to continue working for the company, considering himself to be her most devoted reader. Shortly after he took the job with the profitable publishing house, Metta’s antislavery novel Maum Guinea was released. Orville felt the book was her best work yet. Maum Guinea was as popular as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and praised by President Abraham Lincoln and Congressional Clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher. Metta followed the successful Maum Guinea with a similarly themed piece entitled The Unionist’s Daughter; A Tale of Rebellion in Tennessee. In 1863, she penned another Dime Novel romance entitled Jo Davies’s Client; or Courting in Kentucky. Not unlike The Raftsman’s Daughter, Jo Davies’s Client was a best seller. By the age of 33, Metta Victor had achieve notoriety as an author of romance, social injustice, poetry and humor. All that was left was mystery. When Beadle & Adams published her work The Dead Letter in 1865, she secured her place in American literary history. The Dead Letter is credited as the first full-length detective novel written by a woman. Metta’s combination of gothic horror elements and suspense made The Dead Letter an original and unique read. In early 1865, Metta took a short departure from mystery and romance to write a book on housekeeping. The Housewife’s Manual included chapters on cleaning and renovation, sewing, cultivating plants and flowers, caring for birds and household pets. By the end of the year however, she returned to the subject of love and penned The Two Hunters; or The Canon Campus, A Romance of the Sante Fe Trail. Metta Victor authored more than 150 books and articles and before her death in 1885 she was working on yet another novel. Cancer claimed her life when she was 54 years-old. She passed away at the family home in Hohokus, New Jersey.

Joyce Carol Oates once wrote, “Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” I hoped to be able to encourage young people to want to read at this latest book event in Missouri. I was pleased when a mother approached me after the talk to let me know how excited her daughter was to read the western books I’ve been fortunate to pen. Her daughter won a library of my books and a set of saddlebags at the Saddlebags and Stories signing in Norborne, Missouri. I’m happy that the soon-to-be sixth grader has an interest in pouring over tales of the accomplishment of the brave women heading west in the mid-1800s. It makes being a writer a rewarding venture. On the other hand being at the location where my brother Rick once lived was heartbreaking. I still miss him. I guess that pain will always be.

The Victorian posture was one of stern resistance to human weakness, in particular to carnal pleasures. But the business of vice was extensive enough in Old West cities of the 1880’s to suggest the devil was not in limbo. Respectable standards prescribed laws against prostitution in varying degrees in stringency, but these were not largely enforced as the more urgent demands of lust and money proved irresistible. In the larger cities such as Denver, Colorado and San Francisco, California, prostitution entrepreneurs offered services for all classes and pocketbooks, from palatial bagnios and brownstones to dives in the slum areas. It was a commercial trade, practiced with remarkable openness. The stock solicitation “Hello, dear, won’t you come home with me?” astounded visitors in San Francisco where the girls were particular brazen. Sex had become a commodity; as America’s first woman doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell, observed; “Shrewdness and large capital are enlisted in the lawless stimulation of the mighty instinct of sex.” Police protection cost the bordello operator an initiation fee of $300 to $500 and $30 to $50 monthly thereafter, traditionally collected by the precinct captain. The enormous number of girls involved in interesting counterpoint to the proclaimed rectitude of Victorian life. In 1870, when it’s population was more than 192,000, San Francisco had an estimated 7,500 prostitutes. Prostitution’s unsavory side effects were often more damaging than the vice itself, as the bordellos attracted and encouraged all manner of criminals who found in them a harvest of easy victims. For more stories about the soiled doves of the Old West visit www.chrisenss.com.

The forecast for paperback and hardcover books isn’t good. According to business analysts and stock market speculators, along with cues from the current economic temperature, books will soon be going by the way of vinyl. Ebooks, APPs, Kindles, IPADs, all manner of electronic gadgetry will be taking the place of a book you can hold in your hand, a book you can smell, touch, tuck under your arm or tuck away on a book shelf. Books will become dinosaurs and publishing houses will be no more. It is with all that in mind that I have come to the conclusion that once I live up to all the contracts for the books I want to write I will be retiring from this particular field. The last book I will pen will be about my brother Rick. The Plea will contain the story of what happens to a man and his siblings when he is falsely accused of a crime. It will include letters of confessions from the so-called victim, photographs, interviews with lawyers, politicians, journal entries, live film footage and much more. I will be stepping aside from the work I have been doing in the fall of 2016. I’ll write more about what lies ahead for me later, but for now I will continue with the subject for this month, prostitution in the Old West. This story and many others just like them are found in the book Pistol Packin Madames. “Kate Horony removed the crystal stopper from a glass container filled with brandy and poured herself a drink. The svelte, well-dressed nineteen-year-old took a big gulp, and then poured another. She slammed the brandy back and trained the derringer in her right hand on a man’s body that was stretched out before her. Jonas Stonebreak was lying in a pool of blood, with a bullet in his upper torso. He stirred a bit, struggling to lift his head off the floor. He glanced around the bedroom at the Tribolet parlor house until his blurry eyes came to rest on Kate. She stared down at him, her eyes filled with contempt. The lifeless frame of Madam Blanc Tribolet was slumped in a chair next to Jonas. Kate motioned to the dead woman with her empty glass. “You had no cause to kill Blance,” she told him. “You’re a miserable cur.” She blinked away a tear and poured another drink, while Jonas tried to sit up. “She was asking for it,” he offered, spitting blood. “No she wasn’t,” Kate responded, pointing the gun at his head, “But you sure as hell have.” She squeezed the trigger, firing off a shot that lodged a bullet in Jonas’s forehead. He collapsed in a heap. Kate drank down another brandy before pocketing her gun and leaving the room. Blance Tribolet was the first madam Kate Horony, better known as Big Nose Kate, ever worked for. She was more than an employer to the young woman; she was a friend and surrogate mother as well. The revenge Kate sought for the murder of her benefactress was one of many defining moments in the life of one of the West’s most notorious prostitutes.” God to www.chrisenss.com to read more.

Frontier prostitutes, by nature of their profession, often found themselves in trouble with the law. It was not uncommon for a lady of the evening to be accused of blackmail, theft, or even murder. Such was the case of a soiled dove in Northern California accused of murdering a miner. The curious criminal proceedings were held before Justice John Anderson in 1852, and an article in an August edition of the Union Times attempted to unravel the mystery for its readers: A public woman, popularly known as “Old Harriet,” kept a saloon on Broad Street, overlooking Deer Creek. She had a man, who kept bar for her, and did any necessary fighting. Opposite her establishment was a dance house. A man named Pat Berry was mining on the opposite side of Deer Creek at Gold Run. Owing to a recent freshet, there were no bridges at the foot of the town, but a tree had been cleared of limbs and felled across it, over which foot passengers made their way. The stream was still high, and raged among the naked boulders and logs, which were then innocent of tailings. On Saturday Berry came over to town, having made some money during the week, and rigged himself out with an entire new outfit of clothing. He spent the evening until late at the dance house and then went over to Old Harriet’s place, which was the last ever seen of him alive. In the course of the night, a man in the neighborhood heard what he took to be a cry of “murder,” but he may have been mistaken. Two or three days after, about six miles below Nevada, in an eddy in the creek, Berry’s body was found, completely naked. On the forehead was a large, extravagated wound, the blood discoloration proving that this wound was given while the person was alive. Finding him in this condition led to search for previous traces of him; and it was discovered that he had passed the evening at the dance house, and then gone to Old Harriet’s where all further trace of him was lost. Harriet and her fighting man were arrested and charged before the Justice with murder. McConnell prosecuted and Sawyer defended. The examination lasted several days. The prosecution proved that Berry had money, traced his movements the night of his death, as herein stated, showed that the wound on his head must have been given while he was alive, and that it was made with some round, blunt weapon; that there was a pair of scales on Old Harriet’s counter, and a large weight, which would produce such a wound; the condition of the body, with a new, strong suit of clothes entirely missing; which, it was contended it was impossible could be torn off by the stream, or at least, without greatly marring the body, which was intact, except the death wound on the head. The cry of murder was also proven, leaving a close kitted theory by the prosecution, well sustained before the drowning. As to the missing clothes, it was argued, though with less confidence, that they had been stripped off by the water, rocks, and logs. The case was so puzzling that the Justice took it under advisement for several days. While he was considering it, two men walked the log in company, when one of them pitched off and disappeared. Everybody turned out to find the body, but the search was unsuccessful for several days, when it was found in the eddy below the town from which Berry’s body was taken. The head of the new victim was marked with the same kind of extravagated wound as that of the first one, but there were no other wounds on the body, and all his clothes were gone except his shirt, which was turned inside out and hung at the wrist. The Berry case was at once reopened and this evidence of what might happen was submitted: “The Lord has intervened to save an innocent woman!” Of course the accused went free. If only all the people falsely accused of a crime could be set free.

Madams and the prostitutes who worked for them added to the atmosphere of trouble in explosive towns across the Old West. Some women made a fortune, some remained paupers, others escaped the life of a sporting girl by committing suicide. Soiled Doves were a significant part of the new frontier and their contribution to cow towns and gold rush camps is the subject of the book entitled Pistol Packin’ Madams. Some people believe that the prostitutes in the early mining camps lived a life of wealth, luxury and good times. Although there was wine, whisky, gold and high times, the life of a prostitute wasn’t all glamorous. Newspapers, letters court records and diaries reveal that their lives were invariably tragic and often depressing. Throughout the month of August I’ll be focusing on stories about these colorful women and the often tragic lives they lived. And now…a bit about prostitute Tessie Wall. A parade of horse drawn carriages deposited fashionably dressed San Francisco citizens at the entrance of the Tivoli Theatre. A handsome couple holding hands and cooing as young lovers do, emerged from one of the vehicles. A figure across the street, hidden in the shadows of an alleyway, eyed the pair intently. Once the couple entered the building Tessie Wall stepped out of the darkness into the subdued light of a row of gas lamps lining the busy thoroughfare. Tears streamed down the svelte, blonde’s face. The pain of seeing the man she loved with another woman was unbearable. Several hours before, Tessie and her ex-husband, Frank Daroux entertained passerbys with a robust argument over the other woman in his life. After accusing the man of being a liar and a thief, Tessie begged him for another chance and promised to make him forget anyone else he was involved with. Frank angrily warned Tessie that if she started anything he would put her “so far away that no one would find her.” The words he had said to her played over and over again in her head. “You’ve got my husband,” she mumbled to herself. “And you’ll get yours someday. It’s not right.” She chocked back a torrent of tears, reached into her handbag and removed a silver-plated revolver. Hiding the weapon in the folds of her dress, she stepped back into the dark alleyway and waited. It wasn’t long until Frank walked out of the theatre, alone. Standing on the steps of the building, he lit up a cigar and cast a glance into the night sky. Preoccupied with view of the stars, Frank did not see Tessie hurry across the street and race over to him. Before he realized what was happening, Tessie pointed the gun at his chest and fired. As Frank fell backwards he grabbed hold of the rim of a nearby stage. Tessie unloaded two more shots into his upper body. Frank collapsed in a bloody heap. Tessie stood over his near lifeless frame, sobbing. When the police arrived she was kneeling beside Frank, the gun still clutched in her hand. When asked why she opened fire on him she wailed, “I shot him, cause I love him, Damn him!” Tessie Wall was one of the Barbary Coast’s most popular madams. Since entering the business in 1898 her life had been mired in controversy. Born on May 26, 1869, she was one of ten children. Her mother, who died when she was forty-four, named her chubby, ash-blond daughter Teresa Susan Donahue. Her father, Eugene was a dock worker and spent a considerable amount of time away from home. Teresa and her brothers and sisters took care of themselves. By the time she turned thirteen, Teresa, or Tessie as she was referred to by friends and family, had developed into a beautiful, curvaceous young woman. She turned heads everywhere she went in the Mission District where she lived. In 1884, Tessie accepted a marriage proposal from Edward M. Wall, a handsome fireman twice her age. Edward was a heavy drinker and was often out of work because of his “weakness.” Tessie supported them with her job as a housekeeper. Two years after the pair married they had a son. Joseph Lawrence Wall’s life was short. He died four months after his birth from respiratory complications. Tessie was devastated and following her husband’s example, took up drinking to dull the pain. Read more about Tessie Wall at www.chrisenss.com.

Big changes are coming to my website and news about the additional books I’ll be releasing soon will be announced over the next month. Until then I’ll be presenting some of my favorite mail-order bride ads included in the book Hearts West: Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier. For more information about the book go to www.chrisenss.com. “By a lady who can wash, cook, scour, sew, milk, spin, weave, hoe, (can’t plow), cut wood, make fires, feed the pigs, raise the chickens, rock the cradle, (gold-rocker, I thank you, Sir!), saw a plank, drive nails, etc. These are a few of the solid branches; now for the ornamental. “Long time ago” she went as far as syntax, read Murray’s Geography and through two rules in Pike’s Grammar. Could find 6 states on the Atlas. Could read, and you can see she can write. Can – no, could – paint roses, butterflies, ships, etc. Could once dance; can ride a horse, donkey or oxen, besides a great many things too numerous to be named here. Oh, I hear you ask, could she scold? No, she can’t you, you ______ _______ good-for-nothing________! Now for her terms. Her age is none of your business. She is neither handsome nor a fright, yet an old man need not apply, nor any who have not a little more education than she has, and a great deal more gold, for there must be $20,000 settled on her before she will bind herself to perform all the above. Address to Dorothy Scraggs, with real name. P.O. Marysville.”

It was an honor to have worked on the book about Sam Sixkiller with Howard Kazanjian and to have met Sam Sixkiller’s family members in Oklahoma last month. The following review of the material appears in the September 2012 edition of True West Magazine. “Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman is a very important book, if only for the fact that it is one of the first, if not the first, biographies of an American Indian law enforcement officer of the Old West. The book is not about just any American Indian; it chronicles the life of one of the most famous and outstanding lawmen during the frontier era. Authors Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss, through outstanding research, tell the engrossing story of Cherokee lawman Sam Sixkiller. During his career he was a deputy U.S. marshal under Judge Isaac C. Parker, a captain of the U.S. Indian Police and a railroad detective. This is an outstanding book on the Indian Territory and an American frontier hero. Art Burton, author of Black, Red and Deadly: Black and Indian Gunfighters of the Indian Territory, 1870-1907.”

I’m taking a departure from writing about the Old West today. My thoughts have been centered around the horrific event that took place at a movie theatre in Colorado. I’ve read articles and heard talking heads blame violence on television and in motion pictures for the shooting and I wanted to respond. From cave drawings depicting the hunt to tribal war songs to a little tome called the Bible, the portrayal of violence has, in one way or another, been a part of human discourse ever since we stopped dragging our knuckles on the ground and started using them to give each other noogies. It seems like everyone is looking for someone to blame when people go bad, but motion pictures and television aren’t the biggest influences on kids. We are. There’s probably more real emotional violence and bad vibes at the average American family dinner table than in an entire season of C-S-I. At least that was my experience. I don’t know if I really buy that there’s a connection between violent movies and TV and violent behavior. I mean, I grew up watching a steady diet of Dark Shadows, Cannon, Johnny Quest and Bugs Bunny. I never once thought it was okay to load a gun and go hunting “wabbit” in public places. That being said, there are many shows that prey on our morbid curiosity: When Animals Kill, Brushes with Death, Shark Wranglers, and one of the worst of all, Housewives of New Jersey. Watching the local news isn’t any better. In reporting violent crime, the local news comports itself with all the dignity and responsibility of Moe, Larry, and Shemp locked in a haunted house. I think it’s all very simple. Forget government intervention, forget blaming all the bad that happens on movies and television and get back to basics. Stay home with your loved ones, turn the TV off, pray together, talk together, get to know one another. Tell the people in your life that have had a positive impact on you just how much their influence means. Hug them like there’s no tomorrow because as we know for many of the men and women who went to the movies this past weekend in Colorado there was no tomorrow.